This is my 30,000-foot look at events in the Tech industry for March 2020. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

March 2016 saw the $3 billion sale of Dell Services to NTT, a direct result of Dell’s restructuring following the recent purchase of EMC. IBM was out bolstering its services business with a couple of acquisitions; the first was Optevia, a UK-based integrator focused on Microsoft Dynamics; and the second was Bluewolf Group, a global Salesforce consulting partner. Montreal-based Yellow Pages picked up Toronto-based Juice Mobile, primarily for its mobile marketing capability. Another Toronto company, Influitive, raised some cash ($8.2 million) and bought a couple of mobile app companies, Ironark Software and Triggerfox; and Netsuite bought IOity solutions, a cloud-based manufacturing software company.

Three years ago, in March 2017, Intel bought Israeli computer vision company, Mobileye, for a hefty $15.3 billion. HPE bought storage solution provider, Nimble, for $1 billion. Amazon Web Services, a public cloud infrastructure provider, acquired Thinkbox Software, a company that provides software for managing media rendering workloads. Mozilla acquired Pocket, a startup that developed an app for saving articles and other content.

In March 2018 there was a significant amount of M&A activity. The deal of the month saw Salesforce pay $6.5 billion for cloud integration company Mulesoft. Plantronics paid $2 billion for unified communications company Polycom; and Amazon paid $1 billion for smart home company Ring. Other deals saw eBay shell out $700 million for the commerce platform Qoo10; Cognizant buy Bolder Healthcare Solutions; HPE Aruba buy Cape Networks; VMWare buy security company, E8; and Deloitte pick up API Talent in New Zealand. It is also nice to see Avaya buying Spoken Communications after leaving Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Last year in March 2019, the big deal of the month saw Nvidia shell out $6.9 billion for data centre solutions vendor, Mellanox. F5 Networks paid $670 million for up and coming competitor NGINX; and Juniper Networks paid $40 million for AI startup Mist Systems. Some other deals this month were Apple’s acquisition of machine learning startup LaserLike; Veritas’ acquisition of analytics company Aptare; Mastercard bought security company Ethoca; and Spotify added to its podcast capability with the purchase of Parcast. Other companies in the news included Lyft, which was the first of several high-profile tech companies with planned IPOs in 2019; SAP who announced a major round of layoffs and SAS who joined the growing number of companies investing big in AI, announcing a $1billion investment.

Which brings us back to the present …

In March 2020, the big news is all about the impact around the world of the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic and employment fallout have been dramatic, and there is significant uncertainty about how quickly people can get back to work. So the messages for the period are stay home, wash your hands and don’t touch your face! Stay safe people!

There was some M&A activity worthy of mention, including the $34.9 billion bid for HP, and subsequent withdrawal by Xerox. No doubt that will resurface at some point in the future! Veritas Capital is buying DXC’s Health and Human Services business for $5 billion; Private Equity firm Hellman & Friedman is paying $1.15 billion for software security testing company Checkmarx; Palo Alto Networks is buying CloudGenix for $420 million; and Accenture is paying $139 million for security consulting company, Context Information Security. Other deals saw Watchguard buy Panda Security and NetApp buy Talon Software.

In the wake of so many layoffs there are bright spots around the world as some companies are staffing up. A couple of notable announcements include Amazon, who announced they would be hiring an additional 100,000 people and increasing wages for their hourly workers; and Walmart who announced they would hire 150,000 people.

That is it for my monthly look at what was happening in the technology space over the last month, compared to the same month in previous years. I’ll be back in about a month’s time, until then … walk fast and smile!

Our team has spent the last couple weeks connecting with clients to understand how they’re coping through the COVID-19 epidemic and new economy we’re all experiencing. Not surprising, every organization is experiencing different challenges.

There are devastating stories coming from industries like hospitality and oil and gas, where low demand has halted IT projects and layoffs are being announced in unprecedented numbers. Contrarily, in other industries, organizations have seen the development of new, urgent projects and demand for IT help can’t come fast enough. Telecommunications companies, for example, play a crucial role in a time like this as the world depends on their services — internet, telephone and media — to stay connected. Similarly, both retail and manufacturing industries require all the support they can get. Consumers are stocking up on items so much to the point that grocery stores can’t keep up. More importantly, healthcare services are lacking much needed equipment and manufacturing companies are shifting their entire operations to do what they can to help.

The Many Services of the Staffing Industry

These are just a few examples of the range of activities happening at companies across Canada. Regardless of the specific situation, uncertainty and stress levels are through the roof. As we have conversations with clients and learn about what’s driving their stress, we’re proud that our industry is able to provide support in various capacities:

Finding the needed resources for companies who need to hire urgently;

Managing those contract resources who are no longer required by unburdening clients and working with contractors to understand how we might help;

Bringing ideas and stories to clients about what others in their industry are doing;

Sharing our own experiences with work from home, pandemic planning etc.; and,

Being another resource to talk with, for both clients and contractors, which is always important in times of stress.

Some Examples of What Eagle is Seeing and How We’re Bringing Value

We’re currently working with companies who are scrambling to hire and build teams that make website updates and build applications literally within hours. Others need extra resources to ensure their workforces of hundreds of people are set-up to work from home securely and efficiently. That requires rolling out new hardware and making configurations on mass scales.

Eagle has been able to bring relief to these organizations in a number of ways:

We already have networks of readily available IT contractors.

We find the right person quickly because we track IT contractors across Canada, we know which industries and technologies they specialize in, and we have knowledge about who’s available and when.

In many cases, our recruiters reach out to contractors with experience and knowledge specific to a hiring organization, meaning they can start working at full capacity on Day 1, with little onboarding.

Overall, we’ve been successful at helping clients ramp up projects immediately so they can get their product and information to customers as quickly as possible.

On the flipside, as noted, we’re also having an unpleasant amount of conversations with clients who are struggling. Organizations where the leadership is working as hard as possible to keep things afloat, but the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic has made it impossible to sustain existing projects. Work is being cancelled, people are out of jobs, and productivity comes to a standstill. Eagle continues to bring value and support to these organizations too:

We help deliver bad news to contractors who suddenly find themselves out of work.

We do what we can to find those individuals new gigs with organizations needing skilled IT labour.

We research and make available information in one place for contractors impacted by layoffs, which has also proven to be useful to clients who can share this information with their own employees.

We work with managers to plan for the future.

Although slowing down today, we are hearing from these clients that their project plans, while on hold, are still very important. This will result in a pent-up demand once things settle. By better understand these upcoming requirements, even if the time is uncertain, we are able to help with planning for potential hires. Some clients are proactively hiring, with start dates quite far in the future. Some clients are interviewing (remotely) now, such that they can make hiring decisions faster when the time comes. Others are hoping that their staff being laid off will be available in the weeks and months ahead when they are needed again. Staffing companies are able to provide help with understanding rates, projected demand and projected availability to assist in making these kinds of decisions.

This is not an easy time for anyone. Companies and individuals are dealing with stress and anxiety from all angles, whether it be concerns with financial stability or health. The recruitment industry prides itself on building solid teams that keep companies successful and that is what Eagle has vowed to do for the coming months. We encourage all organizations, those who are hiring and those who are hurting, to reach out to their staffing partners today. Learn what we can do for you and take advantage of our expertise wherever possible. We will all come out on the other side stronger when we stick together.

This is my 30,000-foot look at events in the Tech industry for February 2020. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of previous year’s Februarys …

Five years ago, in February 2015, we saw the $6.3 billion merger of Staples with Office Depot and the $1.6 billion purchase of Orbitz by Expedia. There was a big buy in the communications and IT space with Harris paying $4.75 billion for Excelis to establish a 23,000 person company. There was a big data center play with UK-based Telecity Group paying $2.2 billion for Interxion Holdings. Microsoft made a couple of acquisitions, paying $200 million for pen-tech maker N-Trig and $100 million for mobile calendar company Sunrise. Samsung bought a mobile payment company (competing with Apple pay), LoopPay. Also out buying was Twitter, which picked up Niche, a network of social media creators. There were a number of interesting deals in Asia, including Sapdeal buying luxury fashion estore Exclusively; Foodpanda made six acquisitions of online meal delivery services to establish itself as a powerhouse in that space. Australian job board OneShift bought Adage, which is a job board serving people over 45.

In February 2016, the biggest deal saw HNA Group of China pay $6 billion for Ingram Micro. Two other billion dollar deals included Cisco paying $1.4 billion for IoT company Jasper Technologies and a consortium of Chinese internet firms making a $1.2 billion bid for Opera. Microsoft was busy with a couple of acquisitions, Xamarin a cross platform mobile application development company, and Swiftkey which produces predictive keyboard technology. Another busy company was Alibaba Group which was investing in a bunch of companies, including a $100 million investment in Groupon, and smaller investments in microblogging site Weibo; software company Momo; augmented reality startup Magic Leap; Chinese retail chain Suning; and Singapore telco SingPost. Other companies of note out buying included IBM who bought digital agency Aperto and Blackberry acquired cybersecurity company Encription.

Three years ago, in February 2017, there was very little M&A action. Nokia paid $371 million for Finnish telecom software company Comptel, as it reinvented itself, and Apple picked up an AI startup company RealFace.

February 2018 was a very active month in M&A. There was more consolidation in the telco space with US-based GTT paying $2.3 billion for London headquartered Interroute, thus expanding its global footprint. Security companies were a theme this month and you will spot several in the following list. Cybersecurity firm Phishme was bought with $400 million of private equity money; Splunk paid $350 million for Phantom Cyber Corp; and Proofpoint paid $225 million for Wombat Security Technologies. Other deals saw LogMeIn pay $342 million for Jive Communications; Carbonite pay $146 million for Mozy; and Red Hat pay $250 million for Core OS. Some of the household names that were also out making deals included Oracle, Google, Opentext, Avaya and Citrix.

Last year, February 2019 was a relatively busy month in M&A but there were no blockbuster, billion dollar deals. The biggest deal I saw was Carbonite’s $618 million acquisition of internet security company Webroot. Palo Alto Networks seemed to be on a buying spree, closing two deals this month, $560 million for analytics company Demisto and $170 million for cloud security startup, RedLock. The money guys were out shopping too, with Thoma Bravo paying $270 million+ for MSP platform company Connectwise and Trive Capital paid $330 million for Windstream’s Earthlink telephone service provider assets. Spotify announced its podcast intentions with a couple of acquisitions, Gimlet Media and Anchor, and Witricity strengthened its hand in the wireless charging space with the acquisition of Qualcomm’s Halo business unit. There were some big names out shopping too, including Microsoft who picked up Datasense in the education space; Amazon picked up eero in the home automation world; DXC picked up EG A/S a services company in Europe; and Semantec bought cybersecurity startup Luminate Security.

Which brings us back to the present …

February 2020 was a relatively quiet in the number of M&A deals, however there were some big dollars and some big names involved. Dell announced that it is selling RSA, its cybersecurity arm to a group of investors for $2.075 billion. Internet of Things company, Forescout went public about two and a half years ago, but was bought by private equity for $1.9 billion this month. Another big deal saw SAIC pay $1.2 billion for Unisys subsidiary, Unisys Federal. Infosys improved its Salesforce capability and US presence, paying $250 million for Simplus, a Salt Lake City based consulting company. Other, smaller deals saw HPE buy cloud security company Scytale and Square bought Toronto based AI startup Dessa (formerly DeepLearni.ng).

Other news was somewhat dominated by the coronavirus outbreak and what that might mean for our industry. Conferences have been cancelled, travel curtailed and one interesting bye-product was an increase in hiring of temp workers in China, to service the many people who cannot leave their homes. Related, but not solely because of coronavirus the Chinese government announced it would be “seizing control” of HNA Group Co, which happens to be the parent company of Ingram Micro. Cisco was also among the first companies to announce impending layoffs due in part of potential coronavirus impacts.

The jobs news around the world was generally upbeat and the US economy continues to perform strongly. In Canada the job numbers were not too bad, but there are lots of clouds on the horizon with blockades affecting infrastructure projects and resulting regional unrest.

That is it for my monthly look at what was happening in the technology space over the last month, compared to the same month in previous years. I’ll be back in about a month’s time, until then … walk fast and smile!

This is my 30,000-foot look at events in the Tech industry for January 2020. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of previous year’s Januarys …

Five years ago, in January 2015, the biggest deal saw Yahoo looking like it might be remaking itself, spinning off its $40 billion stake in Alibaba to become smaller, leaner and either buy or be bought! Other M&A activity involving a “B” was Telco equipment company Commscope offering $3 billion for TE Connectivity’s network business. There were also a number of very well-known companies out buying, and in no particular order: Amazon paid something like $300 million (approximate) for chip designer Annapurna Labs; Expedia bought its online travel competitor Travelocity for $200 million; Samsung paid $100 million for Brazil’s largest print company Simpress; Google paid about $100 million for mobile payments company Softcard; Facebook bought Wit.ai a company that has a Siri like solution that can be embedded in other products; Dropbox bought CloudOn a document editing and productivity tools company; Twitter paid somewhere between $30 million and $40 million for Zipdial, an Indian company that does some funky marketing thing with phone hang ups; and finally, Microsoft made two acquisitions, startup text analytics company Equivo and, in a departure from its history, it bought open software company Revolution Analytics.

January 2019 was another fairly busy M&A month. The biggest deal saw DXC pay $2 billion for digital consultancy Luxoft; DXC also bought another European services company EG A/S. Amazon Web Services made a couple of acquisitions, Israeli data migration company CloudEndure and Vancouver startup TSO Logic, a cloud migration company. Accenture was another high-profile company making multiple acquisitions in January: Houston-based consulting company Enaxis Consulting, and Orbium a company providing services in the banking sector. Dropbox splashed $230 million to buy electronic signature company HelloSign; Google bought DORA, a research firm; Microsoft bought database startup Citus; AT Kearney bought consulting company Cervello; and Zix paid $275 million for email security company AppRiver.

VMWare was also in the news for confirming its annual “workforce rebalancing” initiative which may involve hundreds of layoffs. Gartner tells us that 2020 IT spending is likely to increase by a healthy 3.4%. The world’s CEOs are a little concerned about a potential slowdown or even recession in 2020. The World Economic Forum announced the “Reskilling Revolution” with a plan to reskill a billion people around the globe by 2030.

In economic and employment news, both the EU and the OECD had positive employment numbers which were reflected in most of the stats from around the world. The US added 202,000 non-farm jobs in November which was the largest gain since last April. Even where the reports were less than positive, the underlying message was that the economy is doing OK.

That’s what caught my eye over the last month. The full edition will be available soon on the Eagle website. Hope this was useful and I’ll be back with the February 2020 industry news in just about a month’s time.

This is my 30,000-foot look at events in the Tech industry for December 2019. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of previous year’s Decembers …

Five years ago, December 2014 had the political and technical ramifications of “the Sony hack” causing uproar, some very positive economic indicators out of the US and some big names making acquisitions, albeit not huge deals. Microsoft made two acquisitions, the $200 million purchase of mobile email app startup Acompli and mobile development company HockeyApp (which has nothing to do with hockey). SAP bought travel and expense management company Concur; Intel bought a Montreal-based identity management company PasswordBox; Oracle bought digital marketing company Datalogix; Teradata bought data archiving company Rainstor; and MongoDB bought high-scale storage engine company WiredTiger.

In December 2015 M&A was quiet but there was some interesting activity. The big deal saw Canadian telco Shaw make a big play into the cellular space with its proposed acquisition (subsequently approved) of Wind for $1.6 billion. Meanwhile Rogers was also out shopping and growing its Maritimes presence through the acquisition of Internetworking Atlantic Inc. Other deals in December were not large but did feature some of the big players. Oracle bought Stackhouse a cloud company with a specialization in “containers”; IBM boosted its video in the cloud capabilities with the purchase of Clearleap; and Microsoft picked up a mobile communications company, Talko. Other deals saw Ingram Micro buy the Odin Service Automation business from Parallels and in the storage world Carbonite bought Evault from Seagate.

December 2017 saw Atos enhance the footprint of their IT Services firm by paying $5 billion for Gemalto. Apple were busy, paying $400 million for music recognition app Shazam, plus they invested $390 million into optical communications components company Finisar. Finally, in a relatively quiet M&A month Ingram Micro increased its data protection capability through the purchase of Cloud Harmonics.

Last year December 2018 saw IBM sell off a portion of their software portfolio to HCL for $1.8 billion. Cisco paid $660 million for optical chip company, Luxtera; and OpenText paid $310 million for data management company Liaison Technologies. In other deals, Google bought “where is my train” app company, Sigmoid Labs; Corel bought desktop virtualization company Parallels; Trello bought Butler, whose product is a popular addition for Trello users; Kaseya bought IT documentation company IT Glue; and GE continued its restructuring efforts by spinning out its IoT subsidiary and selling its interest in Pivotal. Finally the end of December was the beginning of Dell’s return as a public company.

Which brings us back to the present …

December 2019 saw some big dollar deals in the M&A world with the biggest seeing LogMeIn sold to private equity for $4.3 billion. Intel shelled out $2 billion for AI chip company Habana Labs; and F5 Networks paid $1 billion for Shape Security. In other deals Solarwinds paid $175 million for VividCortex; NTT picked up AWS company Flux7; Fortinet bought Cybersponse; CheckPoint Software bought security company Protego; Acronis bought security company 5nine and Opswat bought cyber security company Impulse.

There have been warnings that cyberattacks will increase in 2020 and 2019 ended with a couple of significant attacks coming to light … LifeLabs announcing a significant breach of patient data and Wawa also announcing a major breach.

Here in Canada we lost 70,000 jobs in November as the US was adding 266,000 non-farm jobs! The US economy continues to do well, although sentiment is trending down, with concerns that 2020 will see slower growth and the potential for a recession. Around the world jobs data is positive other than the obvious spots like the UK, as it continues to wrestle with Brexit.

That’s what caught my eye over the last month. The full edition will be available soon on the Eagle website. Hope this was useful and I’ll be back with the January 2020 industry news in just about a month’s time.

This is my 30,000-foot look at events in the Tech industry for November 2019. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of previous year’s Novembers …

Five years ago, November 2014 was an exceptionally quiet month on the M&A front with the largest deal being the merger of two semiconductor companies, Cypress Semiconductor and Spansion to form a $4 billion company; private equity company Carlyle Group paid $700 million for investment bank technology company Dealogic and Yahoo shelled out $640 million for video advertising company BrightRoll.

November 2015 saw Expedia pay $3.9 billion for HomeAway as a vehicle to better compete with Airbnb. Zayo Holding Group became the first foreign company to own a Canadian telco after paying $465 million for Allstream. Other smaller deals saw Apple buy Faceshift, a motion capture company whose technology was used in a Star Wars movie; and Lightspeed POS bought SEOshop, increasing its size as a competitor to Shopify. Other deals saw Ingram Micro grow its Brazilian presence with the purchase of ACAO; PCM bought Edmonton based services firm Acrodex; Data centre company CentriLogic bought infrastructure company Advanced Knowledge Networks; solution provider Scalar Systems bought another Toronto company, professional services firm Eosensa; and Washington-based New Signature bought Toronto-based Microsoft Partner, Imason.

Two years ago, in November 2017, the big M&A activity for the month saw investment firm Thoma Bravo pay $1.6 billion for Barracuda networks. McAfee also made an acquisition of Skyhigh Networks and smaller deals saw Talend buy Restlet and Qualys buy Netwatcher.

Last year, November 2018 was a busy month in the M&A space, with lots of action! The largest deal saw SAP shell out $8 billion for experience management company Qualtrics. Not far behind was Commscope paying $7.4 billion for telecommunication equipment maker Arris. Vista Equity partners paid $1.94 billion for cloud software company Apptio; and private equity fund CVC paid $1.8 billion for a global IT and managed services provider, ConvergeOne Holdings. The final billion-dollar deal saw Blackerry make its largest acquisition, paying $1.4 billion for AI cybersecurity startup Cylance. In other deals, Thoma Bravo bought security testing vendor Veracode for $950 million; LinkedIn paid $400 million for a surveying startup, Glint; power management company Eaton paid $300 million for Turkish company Ulusoy Elektrik; and Citrix shelled out $200 million for intelligent portal company Sapho. There were plenty of big name companies out shopping with no price tag named, Accenture bought a German design agency Kolle Rebbe; Apple bought AI company Silk Labs; HPE bought big data company Bluedata; Oracle bought Talari Networks; Cisco bought networking company Ensoft; Microsoft bought another AI company, startup XOXCO; Red Hat (recently purchased by IBM) bought storage startup NooBaa; VMware bought Kubernotes startup Heptio; Symantec bought a couple of companies, Appthirty and Javelin Networks; and DXC bought a couple of companies TESM and BusinessNow.

Which brings us back to the present …

November 2019 saw quite a few big dollar deals. The biggest saw Apollo Global taking TechData private in a deal worth $5.4 billion. eBay sold its Stubhub subsidiary to Viagogo for $4.05 billion; Xerox is selling its stake in Fuji Xerox such that Fujifilm will own the whole entity at a cost of $2.3 billion; Google paid $2.1 billion for Fitbit ; and Opentext paid $1.4 billion for security company Carbonite. That is a lot of billion-dollar deals for one month!

Other deals saw Proofpoint pay $225 million for threat management company ObserveIT; DXC picked up solution providers, Virtual Clarity and Bluleader; Rackspace bought professional services company Onica, and Mimecast picked up DMARC Analyzer.

One other company in the news was Cognizant, who announced it would be laying off between 10,000 and 12,00 employees.

Economic and jobs news around the world was a little mixed, with signs of things slowing in most countries. Canada lost jobs in October, despite a big boost in public sector hiring. The US had decent job numbers, but signs were less positive moving forward. Of course, less positive, does not mean negative!

Some interesting reports this month, with Canada’s privacy commissioner pointing out that 28 million Canadians were affected by corporate hacks or mismanagement. Pretty interesting for a country with a population of 37.5 million! Two separate AI report suggest different impacts on jobs into the future; The Brookings Institute suggesting Higher paid workers will be the most impacted; and Jim Goodnight suggesting it will be the factory floor most impacted.

One final piece of news and a little plug, as the Global Power 150 list of Women in Staffing was released, with Eagle’s CEO Janis Grantham on the list.

That’s what caught my eye over the last month. The full edition will be available soon on the Eagle website. Hope this was useful and I’ll be back with the November 2019 industry news in just about a month’s time.

This is my 30,000-foot look at events in the ICT industry for October 2019. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of October in previous years …

Five years ago, in October 2014, we saw a new trend, with two public companies both choosing to split into smaller entities. HP announced it was creating a business service-focused Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and personal computing & printer company HP Inc. Symantec also chose to split into two independent public companies, one focused on business and consumer security products, the other on its information management portfolio. Other interesting news saw IBM pay $1.5 billion to GlobalFoundries so it would take away its money losing semiconductor manufacturing business. NEST bought competitor Revolv; EMC bought three cloud companies: The Cloudscaling Group, Maginatics and Spanning Cloud Apps; and in Korea, Kakao and Daum merged to form a $2.9 billion internet entity.

October 2015 brought some big deals with the biggest seeing Dell offer $26 billion to buy storage company EMC. Interestingly an EMC subsidiary, VMWare, was also out shopping, picking up a small email startup, Boxer. In another deal involving “big bucks”, Western Digital paid $19 billion for storage competitor Sandisk. IBM were also writing a big cheque, paying $2 billion in a big data/internet of things play for The Weather Network (minus the TV operations), and IBM also picked up a storage company, Cleversafe. Cisco paid $522.5 million for cybersecurity firm Lancope; LogMeIn paid $110 million for LastPass; Trend Micro paid $350 million for next generation intrusion prevention systems company HP Tippingpoint; Red Hat picked up deployment task execution and automation company Ansible; Vasco Data Security paid $85 million for solution provider Silanis; and Apple bought a speech processing startup, VocalIQ. As industries converge it was interesting to see Securitas pay $350 million for Diebold’s US Electronic Security business.

Three years ago, in October 2016, there was not a lot of M&A action but Qualcomm paid $47 billion for NXP Semiconductor. The only other sizable deal saw Wipro pay $500 million for IT cloud consulting company Appirio. Google picked up Toronto-based video marketing startup FameBit and Pivot Technology Solutions picked up Ottawa based Teramach.

In October 2017, Cisco paid $1.9 billion for Broadsoft to improve Cisco’s software capabilities. The only other significant deal saw Telus beef up its service provider capability with a $250 million purchase of Xavient.

Last year, October 2018 was an interesting month, with some significant M&A activity and the sad passing of yet another tech pioneer, Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates. On the M&A front, IBM paid $34 billion for Red Hat to increase its game in the cloud systems arena. In the red hot cybersecurity space PE company, Thoma Bravo paid $2.1 billion for Imperva. Twillio also shelled out $2 billion to acquire email company SendGrid rounding out their API offerings. Other deals saw Honeywell bolster its IoT offerings, paying $493 million for Transnorm; Palo Alto Networks is paying $173 million for security startup Redlock; Computacentre paid $70 million for FusionStorm to grow its consulting business in North America; GTT Communications paid $40 million for Access Point to add to its network; and Fortinet paid $18 million for ZoneFox to improve its threat analytics capability. There was plenty more M&A activity with big names involved. Some of them included: Google (chatbot company Onwards); Accenture (DAZ systems); DXC (agodesign); Samsung (Zhilabs); CapGemini (June 21); and NTT Data (Sierra Systems).

Which brings us back to the present …

There was plenty of activity in October 2019. The economy, while slowing down some, is still quite robust in the US and employment figures around the world are generally positive. Reports continue to suggest things will weaken in 2020 but the threat of a recession seems reduced, always bearing in mind that the ongoing trade wars are not helping.

There were numerous reports of the skills shortage, in the US and elsewhere in the world. Couple that with a report suggesting that tech jobs are going to become even more in demand there is a need to guide more students towards tech.

On the M&A side, activity was brisk with the largest deal happening in the robust data center space, Digital Realty paying $8.4 billion for Interxion. There was also a smaller data centre deal that saw Equinix pay $175 million for 3 data centres from Axtel; and another datacenter deal involving ServerFarm buying SNINES. Another big dollar deal saw private equity company Thoma Bravo offer $3.4billion for security platform company Sophos. Big name companies out shopping included Intel buying Pivotal’s Edge Computing platform; Accenture bought Bow & Arrow, a company that helps its clients find new markets; Microsoft bought Mover, a company that helps clients move to the cloud; and Telus is paying $700 million for ADT’s Canadian Security Services business. Some other deals included network company Cienna buying performance and analytics form Centina; Sailpoint paying $37.5 million for two cloud security startups; Tech Data buying DLT Systems; and Trend Micro buying security company Cloud Conformity.

Other companies making news include Microsoft, who are grappling with an activist employee base contesting their government work; HP Inc. who announced significant layoffs; and Oracle who are going to be on a hiring binge.

That’s what caught my eye over the last month. The full edition will be available soon on the Eagle website. Hope this was useful and I’ll be back with the November 2019 industry news in just about a month’s time.

This is my 30,000-foot look at events in the ICT industry for September 2019. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of September in previous years …

Five years ago, September 2014 saw some big deals announced, including Microsoft’s $2.5 billion purchase of gaming company Minecraft, Lenovo’s $2.1 billion purchase of IBM’s x86 server business and Cognizant’s $2.7 billion purchase of healthcare company, Trizetto Corp. Hootsuite had an injection of cash and bought two companies, social telephony company Zeetl and social media marketing platform Brightkit. Google also made two acquisitions: biotech company Lift Labs and desktop polling company Polar. There were plenty more deals announced, including Yahoo’s $8 million purchase of cloud-based document hosting company Bookpad; Cisco’s purchase of private cloud company Metacloud; SAP’s purchase of expense software company Concur; Blackberry’s purchase of virtual identity software startup Movirtu and Red Hat’s purchase of mobile app company FeedHenry.

In September 2015, there was a fair bit of M&A activity but no blockbuster deals. Microsoft was very active, closing three deals, Adxstudio which provides web-based solutions for Dynamics CRM; app developer Double Labs; and cloud security firm Adallom. Accenture picked up the cloud services company Cloud Sherpas; IBM added cloud software startup StrongLoop; Netsuite paid $200 million for cloud-based marketing company Bronto Software; and Blackberry paid $425 million for competitor Good Technology. Hardware company Konica Minolta bought IT Weapons; Qualcomm bought medical device and data management company Capsule Technologies; Networking and storage company Barracuda Networks bought online backup and disaster recovery company Intronis; and Compugen bought some of the assets of another Canadian company Metafore.

September 2016 saw Tech Data pay $2.6 billion for the technology solutions group of Avnet, and HP made the biggest printer acquisition to date, paying $1.05 Billion for Samsung’s printer business. Other deals saw Google pay $625 million for Apogee, and restaurant company Subway bought online order taking software company Avanti Commerce. One investment that caught my eye, in the staffing world saw Accenture invest in crowdtesting company Applause.

Two years ago September 2017 saw Google splash out $1.1 Billion to acquire HTC’s pixel team, strengthening its own smartphone capabilities. In an interesting move IKEA bought gig economy company TaskRabbit. HPE bought Cloud Technology Partners, presumably to strengthen its capabilities in that area and possibly access new clients. Finally Edmonton company F12.net bought Vancouver’s ONDeck Systems as it pursues its goal to be a National IT Service Provider.

Last year, there were some big deals in September 2018. Adobe’s $4.5 million purchase of Marketo was the big deal of the month. Not a true tech play but Sirius XM paid $3.6 billion for Pandora, and with digital/media/tech convergence it seemed like a fit. Digital Realty is expanding its data centre footprint with the $1.8 billion purchase of Brazil’s Ascenty. SS&C paid $1.5 billion for Intralinks. Vonage paid $300 million for contact centre as a service company NewVoiceMedia; Microsoft added to its AI portfolio, buying Lobe; Intel bought a startup, NetSpeed to help with its IoT chips; Cognizant added to its Salesforce capabilities, buying Advanced Technology Group; Infosys also added Salesforce capability in Europe, buying Fluido; and Slack added an AI driven email client to its portfolio with the purchase of Astro.

Which brings us back to the present …

September 2019 was relatively busy in M&A with Qualcomm’s $3.1 billion acquisition of TDK’s share in a RF joint venture, the largest deal of the month. There were some big names out shopping in September, with Microsoft buying cloud migration company Movere; Facebook bought Wearables company Ctrl-labs (reputedly for big dollars); HP bought endpoint security company Bromium; Western Digital bought Kazan Networks; and Github bought developer tool Semmie. Commvault paid $225 million for cloud software company Hevig and there were a few more smaller deals.

Other companies in the news included YouTube who reached a $170 million settlement related to protection and privacy for children; Kik interactive shut down its messaging service; and DoorDash became the latest cyber breach casualty.

The jobs numbers were optimistic in Canada, and the US also had good jobs news although the ongoing trade war and potential impeachment have put a negative spin on some of the reports coming out.

That’s what caught my eye over the last month. The full edition will be available soon on the Eagle website. Hope this was useful and I’ll be back with the October 2019 industry news in just about a month’s time.

This is my 30,000-foot look at events in the ICT industry for August 2019. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of August in previous years …

Five years ago, in August 2014, there were no blockbuster deals, however a number of big name companies were out with their cheque books. Intel paid $650 million for the LSI Axxia networking chip business; VMware bought application delivery provider CloudVolumes; IBM bought Lighthouse Security Group to bolster its cloud-based identity and access management capabilities; Google bought two startups, Emu to boost its messaging capabilities and Directr for its video advertising business; Facebook bought a security startup Privatecore, and the last BIG name saw Yahoo buying app company Zofari.

In August 2015, there were two “billion dollar” deals. Symantec sold Veritas (which it paid $13.5 billion dollars for 10 years prior) to a group of investors for $8 billion and IBM shelled out $1 billion for Merge Healthcare. Smaller deals saw Calgary based Above Security bought by Hitachi; Transcomos bought 30% of Vietnamese daily deals site Hotdeal; Freshdesk bought live-chat company 1Click; and PLDT bought ecommerce startup Paywhere.

Three years ago, August 2016 saw a fair bit of M&A activity although there were no billion-dollar deals. The largest deal saw global staffing company Randstad buy Monster for $429 million. A similar sized deal saw Intel shell out $408 million for artificial intelligence company Nervana. Hewlett Packard Enterprises paid $275 million for SGI (what was left of Silicon Graphics); Apple paid $200 million for artificial intelligence company (there is a pattern here), Turi; Salesforce bought business analytics company Beyondcore for $100 million; and ScanSource paid $83.6 million for telecom cloud services company Intelisys Communications. Other acquisitions saw Microsoft snap up two companies: artificial intelligence scheduling software company Genee, in addition to their XBox division buying interactive livestreaming company Beam.

August 2017 was relatively slow on the M&A front. Symantec sold its website security business to DigiCert for $1 billion, plus a stake in the larger entity. Cisco paid $320 million for hyperconvergence company Springpath, CGI bought a Pittsburgh consulting company, Summa Technologies and Accenture bought a Toronto consulting company VERAX. While not a pure tech play, the biotech world saw Aclaris pay $100million for Confluence.

Last year, August 2018 saw a fair amount of M&A activity: a lot of smaller deals, a few significant moves and some recognizable names were out buying companies. The big deal of the month saw Cisco pay $2.35 billion for access security company Duo Security. In other deals, VMWare paid $500 million for cloud management company CloudHealth; and HP splashed out $500 million for Europe’s largest print provider, Apogee. Apple snapped up Augmented reality startup Akonia; Accenture made two small acquisitions in the digital space, Mindtribe and Pillar Technology; Intel picked up a small AI company Vertex.Ai and Vonage paid $35 million for video company TokBox. Apple was also in the news because it became the first public company to reach a $1 trillion valuation, and they were quickly followed by Amazon.

Which brings us back to the present …

August 2019 was a busy month in M&A, with the big deal getting mixed reviews as Broadcom paid $10.7 billion for Symantec’s security unit. Some saw this as old tech buying old tech, but for Broadcom it provides diversity of offering. VMWare had a busy month paying $4.8 billion to acquire Carbon Black and Pivotal, and then announcing the acquisition of Intrinsic. Private equity company BC Partners is paying $2.1 billion to take Presidio private, and Salesforce paid $1.35 billion for ClickSoftware to improve its service capability. The final deal in the BIG dollar leagues saw Splunk pay $1.05 billion for cloud monitoring platform SignalFx. Accenture was busy this month, announcing two acquisitions; Northstream, a telecom consulting company plus engineering company, Fairways Technologies. DXC spin-off Perspecta paid $250 million for managed services company Knight Point and there were a number of other “big name” companies making acquisitions; Amazon bought E8 Storage; Cisco bought Voicea; Microsoft bought JClarity; Twitter bought Lightwell and HPE bought the assets of MapR.

Other companies in the news included Apple, who, responding to concerns about their Siri recordings, laid off hundreds of workers who used to work with this “data”. Google announced it is closing its Google Hire offering and Cisco announced layoffs in California.

There were several interesting stories this month related to cyber security and various scams. The underlying message to individuals and organizations being that training, tools and vigilance are needed to combat the “bad actors”.

Major economic indicators in the US were generally positive, although economists have started wondering when the next recession swill hit, 2020 or 2021. Canada had mixed job numbers depending upon who you believe and job indicators across the world were generally positive, although Germany’s economy is struggling and the UK continues to deal with the Brexit debacle.

That’s what caught my eye over the last month. The full edition will be available soon on the Eagle website. Hope this was useful and I’ll be back with the September 2019 industry news in just about a month’s time.

This is my 30,000-foot look at events in the ICT industry for June 2019. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of June in previous years

Five years ago, in June 2014, Oracle paid $5 billion for Micros Systems; Sandisk paid $1.1 billion for solid state storage company Fusion-io. Google continued its push into home automation, witnessed by its subsidiary Nest paying $550 million for cloud-based home monitoring service Dropcam. Google itself paid $500 million for Skybox Imaging, a satellite maker to enhance the Google Maps capability. Twitter paid $100 million for mobile marketing platform Tap Commerce and Red Hat paid $95 million for eNovance.

Three years ago, June 2016 saw Microsoft buy LinkedIn for a whopping $2.6 billion. There were other billion dollar deals that month too: Salesforce paid $2.8 billion for e-commerce platform maker Demandware and Amazon announced an extra $3 billion investment in its India operations. Other significant deals included Daetwyler Holdings AG paying more than $877 million for Raspberry Pi maker Premier Farnell Plc; Red Hat paid $568 million for API management software company 3Scale; and OpenText paid $315 million for HP’s Customer Communication Management products. Other noteworthy deals included an investment group’s purchase of Dell’s software arm; Microsoft bought natural language start up Wand Labs; and Samsung bought cloud computing company Joyent. Also, Google Capital announced its first investment in a public company, investing $46 million in Care.com, an online personal services marketplace platform.

June 2017 saw Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. Westcon-Comstar’s American business bought by Synnex for approximately $800 million. US fintech provider, Fiserv purchased British financial services technology firm, Monitise for $88.7 million. Microsoft purchased Israeli cloud startup, Cloudyn, for a price between $50 million and $70 million. Rackspace bought TriCore in an effort to increase Rackspace’s business from customers who want help running their critical applications.

Last year, June 2018 saw a fair bit of M&A activity, the biggest deal seeing Synnex pay $2.43 billion for call centre company Convergys and AT&T pay $1.6 billion for advertising tech company AppNexus. Palo Alto Networks paid $300 million for security company Evident.io; PayPal shelled out $120 million for fraud detection startup Simility; Splunk paid $120 million for incident management platform company VictorOps; Ribbon Communication paid $120 million for Edgewater Networks; and Sharp shelled out $36 million for Toshiba’s PC business. Other companies out shopping included Cisco, who bought WiFi analytics company July Systems; IBM bought maintenance and repair company Oniqua and Shopify bought app company Return Magic.

Which brings us back to the present

June 2019 saw some significant M&A deals with the Salesforce acquisition of Tableau for $15.7 billion, the largest deal of the month. Infinion Technologies paid $10 billion for Cypress Semiconductor; Google paid $2.6 billion for data analytics company Looker; Capgemini shelled out $3.6 billion for engineering company Altran and in the robotics world, Blue Prism paid $100 million for Thoughtonomy. Other companies with smaller buys included Apple picking up the assets of Drive.ai and Twitter buying machine learning startup Fabula AI.

The Canadian Federal Government invested $5 million into an innovation centre in Markham, which is a trend we are seeing more often. There was also more news about CyberSecurity breaches, with suggestions of state sponsored hackers focusing on telecommunication companies.

In Canada, the job numbers are interesting, with Statistics Canada suggesting May was a bumper month, and ADP suggesting we actually lost jobs. The methods of data gathering differ so it will be interesting see how it works out over time.

The US had some mixed reports regarding the economy but overall the story is still positive, with some reports focusing on the growth being not as great as it was… still growth! Generally, indicators in the US economy are positive. Likewise, indicators on jobs and employment around the world are also positive.

That’s what caught my eye over the last month, the full edition will be available soon on the Eagle website. Hope this was useful and I’ll be back with the July 2019 industry news in just about a month’s time.